


(see a world) with brand new eyes

by alpacasandravens



Category: The New Mutants (Movie), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, New Mutants/X-Men fusion, general warnings for the stuff that happened in the new mutants movie, it's more wholesome, tags to be updated as the story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26641681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: Dr. Reyes's hospital is empty. Instead, its occupants found their way to Xavier's School, where their pasts still haunt them, but at least they're safe.
Relationships: Danielle Moonstar/Rahne Sinclair
Kudos: 29





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! I haven't read the New Mutants comics, and the footage of the movie I watched was... not of the best quality, so I'm sorry for any errors I make. That said, nothing in the X-Men Cinematic Universe makes any sense, so.

It’s a normal day at the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters. A little cold, perhaps, the late fall air never quite getting warm, even in the sunlight. That doesn’t stop the students, though, a group of young ones playing some complex version of hide and go seek tag in the gardens. Three older students toss a frisbee on the lawn by the lake.

It’s a Saturday, so no one is in class. Bobby and Rogue took a few of the students into the city for the day, since Alison and Jubilee had somehow gotten tickets to “Cats” and Rogue is the only person patient enough to deal with both the girls and the musical. 

This is how weekends go at the Xavier School. Some people go on field trips, a few local students with more tolerant parents go home, and most hang around the school and procrastinate their homework until Sunday afternoon.

A puff of red smoke appears just outside the front door. All the previous laughter and conversation stops, the grounds full of mutants standing stock-still. The frisbee hits one of the boys playing with it in the side; he makes no move to catch it.

The red smoke resolves into a man easily mistaken for the Devil. A long blood-red tail whips around behind him. He wears only black, a color that stands out starkly against his red skin. Beside him is a boy, covered in coal dust and shaking uncontrollably. 

The students watch as the red man calmly walks up to the school’s door and knocks, four sharp raps that leave no room to be ignored. Then he stands still, tapping one foot against the ground in impatience. 

Professor McCoy opens the front door, blue fur bristling and tone filled with a hostility the students have never heard from him. “What do you want, Azazel?”

Azazel tilts his head back to indicate the terrified boy behind him. “New recruit,” he says. 

“And you don’t want him for the Brotherhood?” McCoy practically spits. 

“He has no control,” Azazel says dispassionately. “And he is too young. This is a school, is it not? Teach him.” 

There is a loud crack, and Azazel is gone, leaving behind only that same red smoke that preceded his arrival. 

McCoy turns to the boy for the first time. “Are you all right?” he says, his tone noticeably kinder. “What’s your name.”

The boy’s eyes stand out in his grime-darkened face, white and somehow hollow. “Where am I?” he says. His voice is so quiet, and his Southern accent is so thick, that only Hank and the students hovering just behind him in the doorway can understand him.

“You’re in New York,” Hank says. “At a school. Why don’t we get you inside and let you clean up?”

He makes no move toward the door, standing with his arms wrapped around his chest like he is trying to hold himself together. 

“Kitty,” Hank says in a low voice to a girl just behind him, “can you get the Professor?” 

Kitty nods and darts through the wall, and when the boy sees that, Hank is genuinely afraid he might pass out. 

Less than a minute later, Professor Xavier appears in the doorway, Kitty standing next to his wheelchair. 

“Sam?” he says. “My name is Professor Xavier. This is my school.”

Sam looks terrified at the Professor’s use of his name until he quickly adds “I’m a telepath. This is a school for mutants.” Sam sits down and curls his arms over his head.

***

As a general rule, the students of Xavier’s School are kept away from the doings of the X-Men. Officially, the X-Men have no identities, known only to the government and the public by their aliases. Unofficially, most of the students have figured out their teachers are the X-Men, if only because it’s pretty obvious. Nobody knows of any other bald telepaths in wheelchairs. There’s no explanation for why Alex Summers - who they technically should refer to as Professor Summers, but he just doesn’t seem authoritative enough to be a professor - would be walking with a limp the day after Havok was known to have been stabbed by a ruthless anti-mutant activist. Or why Professor Munroe would have a black eye after Storm took a hit fighting against the Brotherhood. 

Still, knowing their teachers were the X-Men and this actually mattering are two very different things. On one blustery day in late November, it becomes clear to the group of students in a mutant history class on the ground floor that being in the X-Men is different than, for instance, having a second job.

Professor McCoy is lecturing about something at the front of the room. Davis has long since stopped paying attention, busy dreading the thought of spending his first Christmas at school instead of back at home. He can’t go home anymore, he knows that, but there’s something about seeing Christmas lights go up to a backdrop of leafless trees and wind that cuts right through a fleece that makes him miss Australia’s midsummer Christmases. 

That thought is gone when he sees a woman walking up to the door of the school. The woman is tall, made taller by the platform heels she wears. Her hair is icy blond, and she wears a white fur coat of phenomenal volume. Even being fairly new here, Davis knows who she is. This is the White Queen, Emma Frost. Second in command of the Brotherhood of Mutants. 

“This led to the introduction of the Mutant Registration Act in the House,” Professor McCoy was saying, “an act that was ultimately not passed, shut down with a nearly ⅔ vote against it.”

Davis thinks he should warn him about Emma Frost, but he also doesn’t want to explain why he had been staring out the window instead of taking notes. 

He isn’t the only one not paying attention.

“Professor?” Megan says. Megan sits behind Davis in the back row, as people usually find it difficult to see the chalkboard over her wings. “Professor, there’s somebody in the yard.” 

McCoy stops teaching. 

“It’s Emma Frost,” Davis adds helpfully. 

He is halfway out the door before he remembers to turn and look at his class. “Class is NOT dismissed,” he says. “Don’t leave the room.”

The door is just shutting behind him when Davis sees Professor Munoz greet Emma Frost. He can’t hear what they’re saying to each other, the walls aren’t thin, but he can tell by the way they’re standing that the two are familiar with each other, and they don’t get along. Professor McCoy appears as well, and a girl about Davis’s age steps out from behind Emma Frost. Her hair is the same icy blond, but it is straight, pulled back in a ponytail that looks like it’s probably painful. Her entire right arm is fused to a metal sword, and her eyes are glowing blue. 

Emma Frost motions for the girl to go to Professor Munoz, and she raises a questioning eyebrow. Davis never learned to read lips, but judging from her expression, the girl said something along the lines of “Fuck no.” Davis can’t imagine standing up to Emma Frost. For one, she’s terrifying, and for another, she can get in people’s heads and make them do things whether they want to or not - and unlike Professor Xavier, she uses this power frequently. 

Something happens, though David doesn’t think the girl gets mind controlled, and she walks over to the Professors, dragging her feet and her sword. Emma Frost waves, and she is gone. 

Davis thinks of nothing for the remainder of the lesson but the fact that he was within fifty feet of Emma Frost and somehow managed not to die.

***

The next time a new student joins the Xavier School, it is not nearly so obvious. The X-Men go on a mission one night in late December - a short one, lasting only a couple of days and requiring few members. When they return, there is one more student at the school. Roberto is given a room on the third floor and enrolled in classes, and Bobby is grateful for winter, as the long sleeves cover up a hideous burn on his right arm. 

***

In a small town in the north of Scotland, Erik Lehnsherr is on the run. He’s on the run more often than he would like, these days. The United States has decided that the X-Men are good, and so the Brotherhood must be bad, and have been fervently tracking him. The fact that the groups work together on occasion is something the government either doesn’t know or has conveniently decided to gloss over. 

Being on the run does not mean Erik has gotten any more okay with feeling like he can’t go outside, so tonight he is walking through the streets, snow getting in his eyes as he tilts his head back to look at the stars. The wind gusts around a corner, and he pulls his coat tighter around himself. He’s really getting too old for this. Running all over the world was a lot easier in his thirties. 

Erik is walking past the village church when he hears a scream. He had stopped and purchased a hot chocolate a few minutes ago, which he had mostly to warm his fingers through his gloves. (Emma had finally convinced him to stop drinking coffee at night a few years ago, citing that if he slept he might be more tolerable to be around.)

The scream comes again, and he drops his hot chocolate. It spills on the snow as he throws open the door to the church.

On the left wall, near the confessional, a small girl kneels with her rosary. She frantically turns it over in her fingers, muttering prayers, and crawling backwards to avoid the man before her. 

The man is incredibly large, seeming even more so in the small church and before the girl, who is trying to take up as little space as possible. 

“We’ll get that demon out of you,” he’s saying in the thick accent typical to the village. “Send it right back to Hell.”

He raises a long metal stick as though to hit her with it, and Erik has seen enough. He drags the man over to him by the poker he holds and uses it to impale him through the heart. Only after it is done and the man is dead before him, a puddle of blood quickly spreading across the church floor, does Erik think that this probably isn’t something he should have done in front of that girl.

She is still hiding, now from Erik rather than the newly-deceased priest. Her eyes reflect the light from the church’s candles, and there is something pointed about her ears. She is not human, Erik can tell that much. 

“Stay away!” she says, voice shaking. She holds out her rosary before her, as though the cross is going to do anything to help her. 

“It’s okay,” Erik says, raising his hands as though to show her he holds no weapons. He doesn’t need to be holding weapons to kill, as this girl definitely just saw, but it seems like the thing to do regardless. “I won’t hurt you.”

She does not believe him. He doesn’t blame her.

“You aren’t possessed, you know. What you are is a mutant.”

“That’s the same thing,” the girl says with a conviction that must have been instilled into her from a very young age. “Abominations before God.” 

“I’ve never taken kindly to being called an abomination,” Erik says, sitting down on a pew. 

He can see the exact moment she recognizes him, when the fear in her eyes changes to something more acute. 

“Stay away from me.” She looks around for a weapon that isn’t metal before remembering who she is. Her fingernails grow and sharpen into claws. Erik suspects she has no idea how to use them.

“I can take you somewhere safe, if you like. Or you can stay here. It’s up to you.” 

“You’re - you’re a terrorist. You’re evil.” 

Erik sighs. “I am not, and even if I were, I’m not the kind of evil that kills my own kind.”

“You and I are not the same.” But still, she uncurls herself from her defensive position. Her claws shrink back into nails. 

“We’re mutants,” Erik observes. “What’s your name?” 

The girl drops her rosary back into her pocket. “Rahne,” she says.

“Well, Rahne, have you ever heard of Charles Xavier?”


	2. The Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short chapter, but things are happening! exciting!!  
> (I realized after writing this that there was a tornado during the beginning of the movie - considering I didn't get that while watching the movie, I didn't write it in. Once again, I haven't read the comics and watched a bootleg of mediocre-at-best quality of the movie, inaccuracy is guaranteed.)

Dani is in her bed, asleep.

She is dreaming something, flashes of images flying through her mind. She doesn’t know what’s happening, but she is terrified. 

The temperature drops. Still asleep, she pulls her blanket over her head, either to keep warm in the suddenly-freezing summer night or to try and block out her dreams. Perhaps it is just a way to hide.

A roar rips through the nighttime silence.

“Come on, Dani, we have to go.” Her father is shaking her awake. “It’s time to go.” The roar comes again, closer. 

Still half-asleep, all Dani knows is the residual fear from her dream and the new, more pressing fear of whatever is outside, red eyes glowing in the dark. She doesn’t want to get off her bed, to put her feet in the shadows. She knows she’s being childish, but nothing is safe now. 

“Now!” Her father says more frantically, digging through her closet to throw a coat at her. Dani takes it, and they run.

Dani follows her father out of their small house and down the road. It’s snowing, she realizes distantly as her socked feet begin to lose feeling. Behind them, the creature roars again. Dani pretends not to hear it. It is just a bear, she tells herself. Someone must’ve gotten between an angry momma bear and her cubs, that’s all. But she can see red eyes cut through the night, and she knows exactly what is chasing them. 

“I have to go back,” her father says. “I have to help them.” 

Their neighbors are dying. Dani can hear their occasional cut-off screams.

“No,” she says. If her father goes back, he will die. She can’t lose him too. 

“I’m sorry, Dani,” he says. “Keep running.” 

As he turns to go, a woman drops out of the sky, and the last thing Dani remembers is a lightning bolt flashing in the darkness. 

When she wakes up, she is nowhere near her house. Dani is in a hospital bed, papery sheet drawn up to her shoulders. Sunlight from the nearby window falls on the bed, warming the otherwise sterile, cold air. Her father sits slumped over in a chair beside her bed. The bags under his eyes and drowsy tone of voice make Dani think he hasn’t slept in a long time.

“Hey, sweetie,” he says, a smile breaking across his face. “Hey.”

Dani tries to sit up, and her father places a hand on her arm, gently pushing her back down. “Maybe don’t just yet,” he says. “You only just woke up.”

“How long was I out for?” Dani pushes back the sheet and doesn’t know why she’s surprised there are no obvious bandages. She tries to wiggle her toes, only to find she can’t.  _ Oh, so that’s where I’m hurt _ , she thinks. 

“A day.” 

Dani doesn’t know whether or not to be relieved - from how her father looks, she’d expected something much longer.

“You got frostbite,” he explains. “On your feet. The doctors said you would be fine, but…” he trails off. Dani thinks she knows what he’s thinking. Frostbite? In June? Then she remembers the snow around her feet last night.

“What happened?” 

Her father takes a breath. “There’s someone here who could explain it better. Should I get her?”

Dani doesn’t know how anyone else could have a better idea of what happened. She and her father had been there, and if what she’d heard was any indication, pretty much everybody else was either dead or in this same hospital. 

She nods. 

Her father doesn’t even have to say anything. Only a few seconds later, the door to her room slides open, and two figures enter. One, Dani thinks, looks familiar - tall and with white, spiky hair, she is the woman who fell out of the sky last night. She shows no signs of any damage from said event, and the cape Dani thinks she remembers is gone. In its place are ordinary clothes - jeans and a white T-shirt. 

“Hello, Danielle,” says the second figure, a middle-aged man in a wheelchair. His British accent is striking - having lived her whole life in Montana, Dani hasn’t heard an accent like that except on television. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Who are you.” It’s not a question. 

The man speaks again. “My name is Dr. Charles Xavier, and this is my friend Ororo.” Ororo smiles, but it’s awkward. Dani’s glad for it; she doesn’t like the smooth way Xavier talks. It’s as though he has done this before. “I believe we can offer some insight as to the events of last night.” His eyes flick to Dani’s father. “Mr. Moonstar, can we ask you to step out for a moment?”

“You absolutely cannot,” Dani says as her father is beginning to nod. She grabs his arm and yanks him back into his chair. “You’re going to tell me who you are, and what happened, and my dad is staying right here.”

Xavier nods. “Very well.” 

“Charles and I are teachers,” Ororo says. “But you may know us better as X-Men.”

Dani glares at her father. Did he know that when he let them in here?

“I’m afraid he didn’t,” Xavier says. “We don’t tend to advertise our identities.”

The good thing about her feet being injured, Dani reflects, is that she can flop back onto the bed with absolutely no risk of aggravating anything. “You just read my mind.” She turns to her father, eyes pleading for him to understand just how fucking crazy this is. “He just read my mind.”

There is something terrified in her father’s eyes. He says nothing.

“Apologies,” Xavier says. “You were thinking rather loudly, and your question deserved an answer.”

More than anything, Dani wants this to be a dream. When she wakes up, she will be in her bed, in her own home, and there won’t be men reading her mind and claiming to be X-Men there. 

Xavier winces. “Not a dream either, I’m afraid. Ororo, could you explain?”

The woman had been somewhat removed from the conversation, but upon Charles’s request, she nodded. “We were already in the Black Hills,” she explains, “at a conference for his work.” She inclines her head to indicate she means Charles, and Dani doesn’t know or care why a teacher/X-Man/whatever would be at a conference. “Another colleague of ours picked up some dangerous psionic readings, and we, well…”

“We traced them to you.” Charles supplies. 

This, really, is too much. Dani doesn’t know what psionic readings mean, but it sounds like an X-Man thing, which means it’s a mutant thing, which means it has nothing to do with her. 

“No,” she says.

“Not every mutant comes into their powers at the same time,” Ororo says gently. “For most, it’s during puberty, but for you, it seems to have been last night.”

And. Well. Dani’s not deliberately oblivious enough to say there had been nothing weird going on last night. She knows mutants exist. But the two things combined? To think that she was a mutant, and she’d caused everything? That the people she’d heard die last night were because of her? She wanted to curl up in a ball and never emerge. 

“I think we should go,” Charles said to Ororo, and the two of them silently retreated from the room. “We’ll be just out here.”

“Tell me they’re lying,” Dani said as soon as the door closed behind them. 

Her father grabbed her hand. “I saw the demon bear last night,” he said. “How could I have seen that?”

“How could it have been me?” Dani begs. 

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he says. “But they do.”

“So now you’re just going to trust them?”

Her father’s eyes are empty, and Dani knows that something has changed in the way that he sees her. That even if she didn’t mean to, he believes she killed their neighbors. 

“Fine,” Dani says. “Fine.”

“They say they can help. That their school is made to help people like you.”

Dani pulls the insubstantial sheet over her head and closes her eyes before she can see the bandages on her feet. She wants to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have any more of this written, but I am working on it! I have tons of ideas but I also get distracted super easily so no promises on update speed. I can say that comments make me write faster ;)


	3. The School

Another night in the hospital and a trip to grab her belongings from her mostly-intact house do nothing to cure Dani of her misery. Her neighbors’ house is in shambles. There is a smear of something dark red on the road. 

She does her best to zone out, grabbing clothes from her dresser without really seeing them. On the plane - because of course Xavier has a plane, why wouldn’t he - Dani deliberately ignores his attempts to engage her in conversation, keeping her eyes closed though she can’t fall asleep. 

Dani still can’t believe this is happening to her. The X-Men are practically legends. Hell, there used to be comics about them; a classmate in middle school had showed her one once, proud of the vintage issue. The two people sharing the plane with her don’t feel like vintage characters - they are very real adults, and Dani is very out of place. She spends the entire flight avoiding thinking about the destruction in her neighborhood, squeezing her eyes tighter whenever tears threaten to form. 

The plane touches down lightly, and Dani opens her eyes. She follows Xavier down the plane’s ramp, squinting against the sudden light. 

“Welcome,” Xavier says, “to the School for the Gifted.”

Xavier’s school doesn’t look much like a school. To Dani, who has lived her entire life in the same single-story house, it looks like a castle. The building stretches out for what seems like an age, hundreds of windows glinting in the sun. It stands several stories tall, and with its imposing brick edifice, gives Dani the very distinct feeling that it should not be disturbed. Not by anyone with less than a few million to their name, at the least. 

That image is slightly offset by what’s around it. A basketball court takes up much of the front lawn, and four boys are playing a pickup game. As she watches, one of them unfurls wings to fly over a defender and score a basket. In one of the second-floor windows, someone has hung a pink poster simply reading “F*CK.” Music emanates from somewhere Dani can’t see, disco she remembers hearing on the radio as a kid. 

Xavier is still just ahead of her on the ramp. She should say something, Dani thinks. 

“It’s…” she begins, and realizes she has nothing to say. 

He mistakes her silence for awe, when Dani thinks it is really closer to shock. She wants to curl in on herself and close her eyes. 

“It’s a bit much, at first,” he says. “Still. Noplace quite like it.”

There are a lot of kids here, Dani realizes. Way too many for the middle of June - schools should be out by now, and it doesn’t look like anyone here is doing any studying. 

“It’s quiet now, since the students who are able have gone home for the summer. It’s the best time to arrive.” Xavier speaks, and Dani nearly jumps out of her skin before she remembers he’s a telepath. She’ll have to get used to this.

“Who are able?” 

There is a grim set to his face when he says “The world isn’t kind to those who are different.” He rolls down the rest of the ramp before Dani can say anything else. 

Thankfully, no one throws any more surprising revelations Dani’s way. Instead, a very large, furry blue man Xavier introduces as Professor McCoy leads Dani to what would be her room. McCoy had offered to carry her bag, and Dani had no doubt that to him, it would be light as air. But she can’t bring herself to give up the last thing she had of home, even if she would get it back in five minutes. So she shoulders her bag and trudges after McCoy up three flights of stairs. 

Dani isn’t old enough to have really started thinking about college yet, but this room is exactly like what every TV show and movie she’d ever watched had shown a dorm to be. Nothing about the house’s formidable and wealthy-looking interior and hallways has made it here. A twin bed is pushed against one wall, and a dresser and desk sit against another. There are sheets on the bed, a crisp white that matches the walls. The floor is a short carpet of an indeterminate dark color. The lack of personality in this room hits Dani like a punch to the chest.

“The bathroom’s just down the hall,” McCoy says, and he quietly withdraws. Dani gets the sense he does most things quietly. 

It’s still early, but Dani drops her bag of clothes on top of the dresser, kicks off her shoes, and curls up on top of the covers of the bed. Her bed. No, nothing in this room feels like hers. 

In all those movies Dani had seen, the dorms are filled with posters and decorations and clutter, stuff that makes them a home. She isn’t a fan of clutter, but even when she has unpacked her bag, her impact in this room won’t be noticeable. She doesn’t know whether she likes the idea of impermanence, that she could go home at any time, or whether she should try to make this space her own.

That, she decides, is a problem for later. Now, she closes her eyes and desperately pretends she is at home, lying on the old, beat-up couch in the living room. Even the faintly-audible music from another room helps the image - that could be her father, listening to the radio in the kitchen. The knowledge that it is not sits behind her ribcage, eating away a hole in the center of her.

Some time later, there is a sharp knock on the door. Dani doesn’t know if she had fallen asleep - but now that she opens her eyes, she thinks she might have - but she rolls out of bed and halfheartedly opens the door. Behind her, the bed is still perfectly made.

On the other side of the door stands a girl probably a year or two older than her. She is extremely tall and extremely blond, long hair pulled back into a perfect ponytail.

“Are you the new girl?” the girl in Dani’s doorway asks. She has an accent, a particular inflection to her vowels that Dani has never heard before. It’s interesting, but Dani immediately has the impression that she would not like to hear whatever this girl had to say if she continued talking. 

“Yeah.”

“Thought so.” She glances over the empty room behind Dani and wrinkles her nose. “What’s your name?”

The way she asked makes Dani think she doesn’t particularly care. “Dani,” she says, crossing her arms. “Who are you?”

“Illyana.” She smiles dangerously. “I’m the welcoming committee.”

“Most of the kids here were enrolled,” Illyana says, walking just ahead of Dani down the grand staircase in the center of the school. “By their parents or by the government, ‘cause it’s easier to send mutants here than to foster care. A lot of the parents don’t know this place is for mutants, of course. ‘If they think gifted refers solely to academics, that’s on them.’” She says this last sentence mockingly, like she’s quoting or paraphrasing someone else. Dani has no idea who that would be.

“Most of the kids whose parents know are home now. Lucky bastards,” Illyana mutters. “The ones that are left are the ones with nowhere to go.”

“I have a home,” Dani says. 

Illyana turns to look at her and slowly raises her eyebrows. “Sure you do.” 

Dani thinks of the empty look in her father’s eyes and falls silent. 

Halfway down the first floor hallway, Illyana pushes open a door. Behind it is a vast room, the ceiling at such a height the room must take up two stories. The walls are covered in a faded gold wallpaper that speaks to grand days long past. Wooden tables stretch the length of the room, chairs and benches pushed beside them haphazardly.

“Dining room,” Illyana says shortly. She closes the door.

“The school has cooks, but in the summer they only make dinner. For breakfast and lunch, look in here.” She ducks into another room, hidden slightly by a turn in the hallway. It’s clearly a kitchen, a smallish room with an island in the center that retains some coziness even after a clearly expensive renovation. 

Illyana grabs a Coke from the fridge and loudly opens the can. She doesn’t offer Dani one, and she leaves the room so fast Dani breaks into a jog to keep up. 

“So what’s your mutation?” Dani asks. It’s clearly nothing physical, no wings or webbed fingers or anything like that. 

Illyana smiles, and her eyes flash blue. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” 

She kicks open the front doors that Dani had entered only a few hours ago. Outside, the basketball court is now empty, and clouds have moved over most of the sky, leaving patterns of shadow across the spacious lawn. 

“It’s beautiful,” Dani mutters almost involuntarily. 

Illyana takes a drink from her Coke. “It has to be.”

Dani waits for Illyana to finish whatever she’s trying to say. The acidity in her voice had shocked her, like there was something about the beauty of the Xavier School that personally offended the other girl. 

Finally, Illyana settles on “A gilded cage is still a cage.” 

Another voice breaks into the conversation. Dani hadn’t even seen anyone else around before, but now she doesn’t know how she missed him. A boy who looks to be about her age is sitting cross-legged on a bench a few feet away, headphones hanging around his neck. His hair is long and rough-looking, and it hangs over his eyes in a way that must make it hard to see. 

“‘S not a cage,” he says in the thickest Southern drawl Dani has ever heard. 

“It is and you know it.”

“Pretty damn nice one, then. No walls or nothin’.”

“That’s Sam,” Illyana says, casting a disparaging look at the boy. “He’s too scared of his powers to even imagine living in the real world.” 

Dani does not blame Sam one bit. She has no idea what her powers were, or what had happened that night, but people are dead because of her. At the very least, she can’t harm anyone here.

From behind them, a voice that is unmistakably Xavier says “Illyana, I do not appreciate you trying to turn our new student against the school. Danielle, I assure you that you are able to leave at any time you like.” 

To her surprise, Dani finds herself asking “To go where? Home?” That feels impossible, no matter how much she wants it.

“If you like,” Xavier says genially. “I would recommend that you remain until you feel you have control over your mutation, but naturally, that is up to you.” 

Illyana kicks a pebble. It rattles across the school’s brick porch before skittering to a stop somewhere in the grass. 

“The same applies to you, Ms. Rasputin.”

She snorts like this is an unbelievable statement. Xavier raises one knowing eyebrow and wheels himself back inside, closing the door behind him. 

Dani does not see Sam at dinner that night. She does see Illyana and makes a point to sit across the room from her. 

The next morning, Dani barely takes the time to get dressed before leaving her room. She’s put her things away now, but it still feels empty, transitory in the same way a hotel room does, but even more impersonal. 

There are no classes, and even though she woke up later than most people (she is still on Mountain Time, after all) there’s not much going on. There is someone in the kitchen when she enters, but he doesn’t seem to notice her - it’s a boy of probably 18, wearing boxy headphones and dancing in the way people do when they don’t know they’re being observed. His back is to her, stirring something in a bowl. Dani grabs the first food she sees - a protein bar and an apple - and leaves the room.

At first, Dani thinks she will explore the school - if she has to be here for a while, she might as well know where things are. But she gives up pretty soon, since nearly every room on the first and second floors is either a classroom or someone’s dorm. 

The school should be interesting, Dani thinks. She throws the apple a few inches into the air and catches it mindlessly. Xavier had told her he and Ororo were X-Men. Are X-Men. Whatever. The only weird thing about this place was how incredibly rich it was. If it really was the home of several X-Men, there should be some evidence of that. 

The only thing Dani discovers is a trapdoor that leads to the attic, a room that must run the length of the school and which is filled with cardboard boxes labeled in a large, sure hand that Dani is somehow sure isn’t Xavier’s. “Summer 1961 photos,” one reads. “Cerebro Mark 1 plans” sits underneath “Raven baby photos” (Dani does not know of a Raven at the school). She’s about ready to give up and go back downstairs when she sees a small dormer window. There must be several of these along the course of the attic, but the amount of boxes and miscellaneous junk are blocking the others. 

Dani doesn’t know what she plans to do, or really why she does it. But she turns the lock on the window and slides up the bottom pane of warped glass, and clambers out the small opening. 

Much as Dani had thought, when she left her home, that she wanted to die, now that she’s faced with the option, she finds she doesn’t especially want to. The school is a tall building, tall enough that any jump or fall off the roof, where she is now, would end in serious injury at best. Thankfully, the roof isn’t slanted enough that there’s much worry of falling, but she sits down and scoots along the roof just to be sure. 

She doesn’t go far, just around the dormer. She leans against the warm tiles and presses her shoes against the shingles to brace herself. The school looks different from up here, the building invisible beneath her and the grounds stretching out as far as she can see. The basketball court is in front of the building; that is behind her here. To her left, a satellite dish juts out of the trees. It must be a mile away at least. There is a lake overhung by massive trees, and beyond that, a small building that looks slightly dilapidated. 

The wind blows over Dani’s face, dissipating the midday heat, and she closes her eyes. Up here, life seems easier. She still knows she’s a mutant, and that still terrifies her. She still accidentally killed at least one person, and she still can’t go home. But that’s pushed to the back of her mind faced with a beautiful day, a day that feels somehow inherently peaceful. 

“I see I’m not the only person that comes up here.”

Dani’s eyes snap open as she hears a soft voice. There is a head sticking out of the still-open dormer window, a girl with short, brown hair. 

“It’s peaceful, yeah?” the girl says, Scottish accent thick around her words. She pulls herself through the window, seemingly made difficult by the window’s height and the girl’s short stature. 

“D’you mind if I join you?”

Dani shakes her head. “Go for it.” 

The girl climbs around to Dani’s side of the dormer, thick-soled boots clunking against the shingles. She leans back on the roof and stares into the blue sky. “I come here when everything’s just too much. ‘S like nothing can reach you up here.” 

“How long have you been coming here?” Dani wants to ask when everything becomes manageable, but if this girl is still coming here, it seems she doesn’t know, either. 

The girl sits up. “Since I came to the school,” she says. “Six months.” Maybe she’s a telepath too, because then she says “I come here less now. It has gotten better.” Or maybe Dani’s worries are just really obvious. 

Dani hugs her knees close to her chest. “That’s good,” she says. She doesn’t know why, but she finds herself saying “I feel like I don’t belong here. Like one day I’ll wake up and realize I don’t have a mutation after all.” 

“I used to pray for that,” the girl says. The small silver cross on her necklace glints in the sun, and she hunches into herself almost imperceptibly. 

“Does it ever feel natural?” To be here? To be a mutant? 

“I hope so.” 

A small boy’s scream of excitement and shock carries up to them as, several stories below, he is good-naturedly pushed into the lake by a friend. The friend’s laughter follows as he joins his friend in the water. 

“I’m Rahne,” the girl says. 

“Dani,” she responds. “I’m new.” 

There is something friendly in Rahne’s eyes, so Dani points at the rundown building across the grounds and says “Do you know what’s in there?”

Rahne shakes her head, but she is smiling. 

“Do you want to find out?”

**Author's Note:**

> Where am I going with this? Your guess is as good as mine.


End file.
